Royal Mail issues odd request to families amid Christmas strike chaos

Royal Mail has urged postmen to bring their parents, siblings and friends to work to break strike action and “save Christmas”. Royal Mail has asked staff to “bring friends and family to support the operation and deliver Christmas”.

Bosses say the idea is “a very good initiative” and could be “very quick” to save the holiday season, The Telegraph reports. But the Communication Workers Union said: “Support for the strike is so strong that they are asking managers to bring in friends and family to help clear the backlog.”

They added: “Royal Mail risks serious security risks by bringing in completely untrained random people with no experience to plow through your Christmas mail. There is a better day to deal with this backlog: stop destroying your workers’ livelihoods, guarantee you will treat them with the respect they deserve, and let them get back to grafting over Christmas.”

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Royal Mail says friends and family would be paid the same rates as temporary workers. Royal Mail said it made a “best and last pay offer” about three weeks ago, worth up to 9% over 18 months.

The company said it is “doing everything it can to deliver Christmas for our customers”, thanking an “increasing number of postal workers who go back to work each strike day, temporary workers and managers from across the company who help keep the mail moving ” .

Trudi Thomson, who has worked as a postman for 20 years, was one of the postmen who went on strike this week. Trudi said: “We want better conditions and a good wage offer.” Trudi added to PA news agency: “Customers rely on us. If our hours are changed and these customers don’t receive their mail when they expect us, that’s not good.”

She spoke of the importance of the postman’s role in communities, adding: “I work around the farms, villages that don’t have shops, so they look forward to seeing you. We sometimes take their mail for them to send, and they give me eggs from their farms, I have biscuits in my pocket for the dogs that know me, people know us.”